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The Book of Business Etiquette
Excerpt from The Book of Business Etiquette
Without trying to settle the question as to whether he is good or bad (and he really can be pigeon-holed no better than any one else) we have to accept this: He is the biggest factor in the American commonwealth to-day. It follows then, naturally, that what he thinks and feels will color and probably dominate the ideas and the ideals of the rest of the country. Numbers of our magazines — and they are as good an in dex as we have to the feeling of the general pub lic — are given over completely to the service or the entertainment of business men (the T. B. M.) and an astonishing amount of Space is de voted to them in most of the others. It may be, and as a matter of fact constantly is, debated whether all this is good for the coun try or not. We shall not go into that. It has certainly been good for business, and in consider ing the men who have developed our industries we have to take them, and maybe it is just as well, as they are and not as we think they ought to be. There was a time when the farmer was the principal citizen. And the politician ingrati ated himself with the people by declaring that he too had split rails and followed the plow, had harvested grain and had suffered from wet spells and dry spells, low prices, dull seasons, hunger and hardship. This is still a pretty sure way to win out, but there are others. If he can refer feelingly to the days when he worked and sweated in a coal mine, in a printing shop, a cot ton, wool, or silk mill, steel or motor plant, he can hold his own with the ex-farmer's boy. We have become a nation of business men. Even the dirt farmer has become a business man — he has learned that he not only has to produce, he must find a market for his product.
Without trying to settle the question as to whether he is good or bad (and he really can be pigeon-holed no better than any one else) we have to accept this: He is the biggest factor in the American commonwealth to-day. It follows then, naturally, that what he thinks and feels will color and probably dominate the ideas and the ideals of the rest of the country. Numbers of our magazines — and they are as good an in dex as we have to the feeling of the general pub lic — are given over completely to the service or the entertainment of business men (the T. B. M.) and an astonishing amount of Space is de voted to them in most of the others. It may be, and as a matter of fact constantly is, debated whether all this is good for the coun try or not. We shall not go into that. It has certainly been good for business, and in consider ing the men who have developed our industries we have to take them, and maybe it is just as well, as they are and not as we think they ought to be. There was a time when the farmer was the principal citizen. And the politician ingrati ated himself with the people by declaring that he too had split rails and followed the plow, had harvested grain and had suffered from wet spells and dry spells, low prices, dull seasons, hunger and hardship. This is still a pretty sure way to win out, but there are others. If he can refer feelingly to the days when he worked and sweated in a coal mine, in a printing shop, a cot ton, wool, or silk mill, steel or motor plant, he can hold his own with the ex-farmer's boy. We have become a nation of business men. Even the dirt farmer has become a business man — he has learned that he not only has to produce, he must find a market for his product.
309 pages, Paperback
First published October 19, 2009
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September 19, 2018
This is a useful reference book despite the somewhat outdated methods of communications, dress, and sales attitudes it discusses. It is very dry reading, but if the reader can get beyond the pages and chapters that repeat themselves, this book shows that
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review